


We'll Write Our History in Love and Blood

by Goethicite



Category: 24, Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Children, Crossover, Gen, Implied abuse, PTSD, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His name is Chase Edmunds.  He's never repudiated it.  They call him Savin.  He doesn't mind.  There's nothing he wouldn't do for his daughter.  (SPOILERS FOR IM3.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Write Our History in Love and Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Way back when, during Season 3 of 24, I fell in love with a character full of piss, vinegar, and brimstone. His name was Chase Edmunds, and it ended badly for him. In IM3 they called him Savin, but he read to me as the same character, older, angrier, and done being a hero.

He died a traitor. He died a traitor, but he was meant to die a hero. Fuck Jack Bauer’s sense of duty. What’s a man with only one hand? According to the state of California, he wasn’t a father. According to CTU, he was a retiree. It didn’t matter he could still pass the required physical. So long as one-handed push-ups can be substituted in. Chase Edmunds was short a hand and options when he left California with his daughter's car-seat in the back of the SUV.

Chloe offered to help of course. She offered to marry him, to adopt Angela. They were best friends. She would have done anything for him, but it went both ways. Maybe it would have been different if Chase had been more aware of his own mind, but his jobs had never encourage introspection. Instead, he denied the guilt, the rage, the PTSD, and ran away before the state could take the last good thing in his life. It wasn’t fair how angry he was at Chloe for what Jack had done. She’d been nursing a crush on their boss since they’d moved to LA. Chase found it amusing until he didn’t. What he said to her wasn’t true, and it made her cry. Maybe he left because the alternative was seeing her again after he broke her heart.

Either way, he left sunny LA for his place of birth. All Boston held was a dead cousin and dead-end jobs. Chase always had dexterous hands. Locks loved him. So did women. It also meant he’d always been tipped well behind the bar drawing attention with sleight-of-hand tricks and flairs with his drink pouring. He’d walked out on his PT, drug prescriptions, and chance at getting a prosthesis when he kidnapped his own daughter. Still, his family was old Boston. He got a prosthesis second-hand (ha, ha), too big, even with padding it left sores, and a line on illegal oxy to help deal with the pain. He forced himself to learn how to juggle bottles again. Childcare was expensive, and he was living on tips as it was. The tips were actually better, drunk customers impressed by his clever fingers especially since he only had five and a metal claw to work with.

He held it together for almost eight months. Until Angela wouldn’t stop crying, and he was too tired to change a diaper with his prosthesis. The metal scratched his baby girl. His clumsiness made his little girl bleed. He was shit father. Killian found him at a fire station preparing to surrender Angela. Chase had a loaded .38 he’d bought from the pawn store down the street from the shitty little apartment he rented by the week at the small of his back. It had already seen use twice. Once on a would-be rapist. Then again on a mugger stupid enough to point a gun at Chase’s baby. He was planning to dump it on the way to the airport. Africa had jobs, and the kind of men Chase was going to find wouldn’t care if he had only one hand. He’d make enough money to earn a Swiss bank account. Then he’d come back for Angela and take her abroad, somewhere with low living costs, hire a nanny. Instead, he ended up pointing a gun at Killian’s head.

The thought of trusting her to loving care of the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services was worse than having his hand cut off. Killian knocked on the window of the SUV while he was curled around Angela crying into her blankets. It didn’t slow Chase’s reaction time in the least. “Agent Edmunds,” Killian stuttered as he stared down the barrel. “I hear you’re in need of a job with good health and childcare benefits. I may be able to help.”

Chase stuttered out half a dozen curses before Killian hurriedly modified his statement to, “I can get you your hand back. I swear. Please don’t kill me.” There was no reason for Chase to believe the skinny little geek, but he did. He let Killian sit shotgun and drove himself and his daughter to their new life with stuttered directions.

Chase stepped in for Eric Savin, an Air Force officer who’d died during Phase I testing. He took Savin’s name and the large paycheck gratefully. Angela lived in country house with a live in nanny who spoke French and three dialects of Chinese as well as English. Mei was lovely, intelligent, and Angela took to her faster than anyone except Chloe. More than that, Chase trusted her. In between the experiments and the jobs, he took Mei out to the range and showed her how to use a gun. He gave her Chloe’s information and told her to go to LA if anything ever happened to him. She nodded with her dark eyes wide and clutched Angela a little closer. Chase never asked what Killian did to her before he tossed her to Chase like a toy he was finished with, but Chase made sure she understood she’d be well treated so long as she loved Angela.

The rest is history. Chase, as Savin, took to Extremis like it was the oxy he’d popped to deal with the stump of his wrist. There’d always been a fire under his skin. The fact it manifested now didn’t disturb him much. Anger had been his default setting since meeting Jack Bauer. It was nice the rest of the world knew it too. He was good at being a terrorist after so long hunting them. No one could touch him. Not when he'd helped to write their playbook.

Killian found out about his first degree, the one in Mechanical Engineering, or he always knew. Chase suspected the latter. Killian started bringing Chase in on the technical projects, putting Chase through his paces in things he hadn't done since college. Chase knew Killian was crazy, the batshit, megalomaniac kind. He just didn't care. He'd already done his part, saved the world once. The thanks he got was crippling injury, a pink slip, and excuse for CPS to take his baby. Being a good guy didn't pay. Working for Killian was mentally challenging and a whole lot of excuses for excessive destruction. It was fun, an adrenaline rush with no bitter aftertaste of paperwork and hearings. The mood swings and wracking pain that sometimes hit were a small price to pay for a contented life. Chase killed, lied, stole, and betrayed with a smile, not regretting a single second of it. He'd earned the right to be a monster.

Chase Edmunds, alias Savin, died a traitor in a plot against the President of the United States. Iron Man shot him through the heart. No one cared to recover the body. So no one ever knew who he was. Chase Edmunds disappeared a hero, saving the life of the President of the United States and the collective lives of the citizens of Los Angles. He crawled out of the drink barely human moaning his baby girl’s name. If Ramon Salazar, soulless bastard, couldn't kill him, Tony Stark, professionally fucked up hero, didn't stand a chance. The rest, as they say, is history in the making.


End file.
